Electric vehicles aren't exactly selling in droves for automakers around the world. Many of today’s highly efficient gasoline-engine vehicles are offering such high fuel efficiency ratings that it makes little sense to pay the extra money for hybrids or EV for many consumers (that is unless you live in California).

Ford is trying to get customers to lease its Focus EV electric vehicle and is offering significant discounts to land buyers. Ford has announced that it has dropped the base price of the Focus EV by $2,000 on cash purchases. Ford is also offering as much is $10,750 off the cost of a three-year lease.

Ford also plans to offer 1.9% financing on the Focus EV if purchased through Ford Motor Credit. The Focus EV didn't have a good 2012 with Ford selling only 685 of 1,627 vehicles it built. That sales rate made the Focus EV one of the worst performers in the industry.

Ford isn't alone in having to discount its electric vehicles to get consumers more interested; Nissan also recently dropped the price of its 2013 Leaf by 18%. The Leaf now starts at $28,800 and Nissan is offering new incentives to help boost sales.

"We certainly are not in a situation where we have to completely discount but we do have to respond to competitive pressures," Ford spokesman Wes Sherwood said. "We're not anywhere close where Nissan has gone with the Leaf."

The Ford lease offer is on Red Carpet leases if buyers take retail delivery by April 1. If the buyer meets those conditions, they will receive $10,750 off (a figure which includes the $7,500 federal tax credit).

The MSRP for the Focus EV base model is $39,995, while the new price for cash purchases is $37,995.

Wrong. The manufacturing for EV components isn't anywhere nearly as cost effective as ICE ones. It's just the way manufacturing works, the higher the volume, the less per unit it costs to bring it to market.

Think SSD's when they first came out. Someone like you might say, why cost so much? It's just a shell with some flash chips and a controller, right!? Yes but until the manufacturing scales up to a certain level, it simply costs more to bring the devices to market. Especially ones competing with highly mature and entrenched technologies.

I agree that EV's are overpriced compared to ICE vehicles. But that's hardly because of automakers gouging. You're way off base there I'm afraid.